Listening to it at the moment. Very good indeed. I feared it may turn out like Otomo Yoshihides "Revolutionary Pekinese Opera" but it is in fact very listenable. ;)

After a satisfying listen to FRAKTURE during this morning's drive, I have a few observations about this exceptional work.

The rhythms, when they happen, are a very binding element. They, along with the judiciously spaced excerpts from the original broadcast, Margaret's own readings (poignantly vetted) and the contemporary news clips do a terrific job of keeping the momentum going throughout the recording. The parallels Margaret draws between Orwell's original text and current global distresses are both lucid and concise.

Aurally, the choices she makes w/ synthesizers and sound collage work in perfect harmony with the dialogue, and go very far in conveying a the sounds of a computerized totalitarian future, as it might have been imagined in 1949; mechanized hums with the "click-clcik-click" of early computer prototypes. Margaret seems to deftly straddle this boundry, never over-reaching with the current technology, ergo avoiding the creation of atmosphere that would likely be beyond what the novelest could have anticipated in his time.

This grand project showcases Margaret Noble's ambitious imagination, and it illustrates just what is possible when an artist grows tired of a world where electronic music has, in many ways, lazily devolved into an endles procession of reverb-laced droning sines with the occasional tinkling chime and off-the-shelf, canned beats.

FRAKTURE is not only a great album, but I assert that it is an IMPORTANT one, and it really deserves to stand as an archival document. It should be in a time capsule, to be revisited in 100 years, because when future generations aim to evaluate this generation's cognative grasp of the gradual erosion of the individual voice, through laws designed with our "best interests" in mind, I'd like to believe that they'll think there was no veil across our eyes.

Mozilla - Still love the front page though;)

So Glad this got funded and turned out so well! Just used mty code: PS can't get in the Orwell site but the scrolling words behind eye is incredibly dizzying! COOL!

Thanks for the exciting update! I'd definitely bring your album to play at the Burning Man Festival, if it's released in time -- but if not, I'll be sure to bring the couple pre-release tracks! Feels like a good airspace to release your sounds into!

Boy, you sure look happy in that update, MN!

I tried a last min. push by DM'ing all my Twitter followers (of which there are few), and it looks like the ever-reliable and fantastic @WendyandLisa responded w/ a pledge (through their own liaison, @renatak).

I sure do loves me some Wendy & Lisa!!! They're positively awesome w/ their fan base.... They follow every fan who follows them. Can't wait to give Lisa a thrashing in online Scrabble!

Congratulations on the 11th-hour victory. Your work deserves everyone's attention.

Congratulations, Margaret! Looking forward to the results. BTW, would it be cool to play this on the community radio station here, on which I have a programme? (Electric Storm/A Missing Sense, CKLN http://www.ckln.fm)

Glad you made it. Sounds like a cool project to be working on.

I'm not exactly positive on this point, but if you don't make it to six thousand dollars in the next hours, will we still receive your album? If we don't that would seem excessively...draconian
hehe oh ha

What about Rand's "Anthem"? Where would you place that? It's an interesting story that falls w/in the school of distopian totalitarianist fiction, but is it theft? It certainly was a pain in the ass to read, despite its brevity. I re-read it recently, and it struck me as a stalled notion that Rand simply refused to quit.

While I believe that Zamyatin's "We" is a far superior novel to "1984", I think it's a bit much to say that Orwell stole from him. The style, tone, characters and narrative of booth books are completely different. Indeed, about the only similarity is the presentation of a future totalitarian dystopia, which in both cases was not futurist at all, but written directly from day-to-day life.

Now Atwood on the other hand, could well be accused of plagiarising the plot of "The Handmaid's Tale" from works by Robert Heinlein and Keith Roberts, though it seems I am the only one to have ever noted this fact. Roberts writes far more convincingly from woman's point of view than Atwood ever managed in her annoyingly bad book.

None of this has much to do with this intriguing project except the commonality of the name "Margaret".

How does the "digital download" thing work, MN? I'm looking forward to hearing this piece. I heard a little on the AIR radio app.... now I need the whole thing.

...and Ayn Rand's "Anthem" and Atwood's "Handmaid's Tale"..... and so on and so on.

Art is only art until somebody discovers the inspiration behind the piece.... then it becomes plagiarism.

We can never shed our influences... we can only strive to play down or conceal them.

The_Unflattered.

Change the Nobel Peace Prize to the "Noble Peace Prize"

No, the bad news is that Orwell gets all the credit, while no one has heard of Zamyatin... And, by the way, this should not diminish the music you are creating. It is just a comment on the current atmosphere of artists basically claiming other people's work as their own. Give credit where credit is due.

Good thing someone heard George - bad news about Yevgeny ...